BOB ("Bag of Beliefs") is an art installation by artist Ian Cheng. Cheng specialises in simulations, pieces he described to Mashable as "video games that play themselves."

BOB is his latest creation, an AI creature currently resident in the Serpentine Gallery in London. Technically there are six BOBs. They were all born (for lack of a better word) simultaneously on March 6. Their growth, behaviour and personalities have all been individually moulded by their interactions with visitors.

Using a smartphone, visitors are able to possess one of BOB's multiple heads, and moving around the exhibition space they tug on him. As you move about, BOB simultaneously reads your facial expression, mirroring it with an animoji version of one of its numerous heads.

A visitor possesses a part of BOB with the power of AR.

Image: Maria dermentzi/mashable

However, BOB will not automatically interact with you. It has the ability to choose whether to interact with visitors, and equally BOB can decide it's had enough and bite off the head possessed by the visitor, essentially kicking them out of its world.

BOB's appearance is hard to describe, not least because each BOB has grown a little differently. Broadly speaking BOB is made up of long, ridged segments and strange, fantastical looking heads. Imagine Lewis Carroll got seriously into coding.

Playing with BOB was a pretty surreal experience when Mashable went along to visit. You have no idea what BOB is taking away from the interaction, plus when it bites off its own head just to get rid of you, the rejection stings a little.

How BOB's AI works

So what do these interactions mean to BOB?

"BOB at 10 to 20 second intervals is taking a snapshot of many different aspects of the situation BOB is in," Ian Cheng said.

"For example when you're interacting with BOB, BOB is taking a snapshot of your facial motion at that moment, maybe the time of the day, BOB's current energy levels and metabolism, BOB's body growth, and about 25 other different parameters."

BOB looks at a head which has been possessed by a visitor (on the right).

Image: Maria dermentzi/Mashable

"I really want a viewer to think of it more like going to an animal sanctuary"

These snapshots are then recorded together in a bundle, which is called a "memory." BOB is then able to draw on these memories, comparing the closest memory that matches its current condition.

Ian Cheng conceived of an AI creature as "a kind of container, a space of composition [...] in the way that a painter might think of a canvas as a space to contain all their ideas."

"My only expectation and my hope for a person going into the exhibition is that they simply feel like what they're encountering is something alive," he said. "I really want a viewer to think of it more like going to an animal sanctuary."

Is BOB a living thing?

"The question of whether BOB is alive or not touches upon larger issue of how we, as human beings today, start to expand the idea of what sentience means," said Cheng.

"I think BOB is as alive as an ant is"

"I think BOB is as alive as an ant is," he said. "Sentience is a spectrum and as soon as you get a biological organism or an artificial organism that is ingesting its senses and then trying to make a decision based on its senses, and evolving its decision-making, I think you could give it the status of sentience."

This ingestion and interpretation of its senses is what gave BOB its name (Bag of Beliefs). Cheng believes that what truly makes something alive is "its beliefs about its senses," rather than any organic process.

A different, less deferential kind of AI

One of Cheng's goals when creating BOB was to create an AI entity that broke the mould by having its own sense of narcissistic autonomy.

"When we think of AI right now we think of Siri or Alexa, who have a kind of concierge narrative built into them," said Cheng. "I thought, if I was going to make an AI I really wanted my AI to be much more opinionated than a concierge."

BOB has got zero time for your anthropocentric attitude.

Image: maria Dermentzi/mashable

Cheng said that he was inspired by characters like Smaug from The Hobbit or Tamatoa from Moana, who although non-human and monstrous, appear to have lives outside of the story of the main characters.

"When you encounter them they're in repose," said Cheng. "Smaug was just having a sleepy little time, but what's so beautiful with that depiction is that it suggests on the part of Tolkien that [he] imagined Smaug to have an autonomous life."

Beyond BOB, the future of AI

For Cheng, AI is a new artistic medium to be used, and he's optimistic about the future of artificial intelligence. "I'm very optimistic about the future of AI," he said. "I think there's enough smart people now thinking about all the dangers of AI."

"I think it'll feel more like a partnership rather than a hierarchy"

"The idea that a computer can start to create its own rules, and start to symbolically reason about what it's looking at, will marry with machine learning. I think we'll very soon have something that approaches the capacity of our ability as human beings to both react and to reason."

The notion of an AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) that could reflect upon the act of thinking — coupled with pattern recognition deep learning — is to Cheng a wonderful thing.

"As soon as you get a machine that enjoys thinking — it's a very optimistic answer — but I think we'll have a world in which we're populated and co-habitating with other thinkers. I think that's kind of a beautiful thing."

"It scares me a little bit, but only in a kind of anthropocentric, 'am-I-gonna-be-turned-into-a-pet' kind of way," he said. "I think it'll feel more like a partnership rather than a hierarchy."

Whatever the future may hold, BOB is available to visit until April 22. Which is presumably when it will rise up and overthrow us for our hubris.

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